Manchester United supporters don’t have Tom Cleverley to kick around anymore. The midfielder is currently on loan to Aston Villa this season, and yesterday his loan deal was made permanent. Aston Villa will tie up a £7.5 million move to keep midfielder Tom Cleverley on their books when the January transfer window opens.
Cleverly moved to Villa on deadline day, and he’s been featured regularly for AVFC. Given some of the candid things he said ton his way out of Old Trafford, we didn’t expect him to come back. Now it’s official. Cleverley was quite blunt about all the horrible abuse Red Devils supporters sent his way.
Cleverley said this in The Telegraph:
There were online petitions to get Tom Cleverley removed from both his club and country side. Tom Cleverley had to shut down his Twitter account due to the amount and severity of abuse he was receiving from United fans. Why does he receive vitriol?
Well, he had one really amazing game in what was essentially a glorified exhibition match once. That raised expectations for him to an unrealistic level, and he never came even remotely close to fulfilling those expectations. Hence the backlash.
Here’s a statistical analysis of whether or not he’s really that bad; or not.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2